Blade 2 Empowers Customers in Film, Animation and Games with Streamlined Motion Capture Production Workflow

Oxford, UK: Vicon, developer of award-winning motion capture (mocap) products for the entertainment, life science and engineering industries, is pleased to announce the official release of Blade 2, powered by Axiom. This follows a highly successful alpha program, with studios around the globe enthusiastic about the results seen with Blade 2.

Blade 2 is the first entertainment motion capture processing software to truly deliver compelling real time results out of the box. Two years in development, Blade has been completely re-engineered with a new live engine called Axiom, which faithfully reproduces a live stage captured performance with an accurate, fast, clean, real-time digital visualization. Blade 2 is capable of effortlessly managing capture of multiple characters, complex production scenarios and difficult shooting conditions. Significant occlusion and complex motions are taken in its stride with no loss of fidelity or subtlety of motion.

Vicon customers who have been testing alpha versions of the pre-release software are already realizing the benefits of working with Blade 2.

Framestore is especially excited about Blade 2 for pre-visualization. Ben Guthrie, Motion Capture Supervisor said, “We now have more clients that are not interested in any post-processed work, simply because it’s so easy to get the raw mocap data – we’re literally delivering data to the client before they get back to their desk. I’d pitch Blade 2 against any other system on the market. The real time is awesome.”

Before deploying Blade 2 on their 118 camera main stage, Brad Oleksy, Director of Studio Operations at the EA Capture Lab, set up an eight camera mocap volume specifically to test Blade 2. So far, he has seen some amazing results. Oleksy said, “I haven’t seen eight cameras give that kind of robust capture EVER. These are exciting times in motion capture thanks to Blade 2!”

With over seven years’ experience in motion capture, Mike Hedges, Studio Manager at Audiomotion says Blade 2 is what the real time market has been waiting for. “Blade 2's real-time is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is robust and solid even on the most testing of shoots. Gone are the days of collapsed characters because markers have been occluded. You have to see it to believe it.”

Features of Blade 2 include*:

--New real time processing of digital character animation during a motion capture shoot
--Automatic fixing of occlusions for flawless visuals during real time shooting and faster processing of the offline data
--Capture multiple, simultaneous range of motions (ROMs) saving time during setup
--Quick Post allows offline access to Axiom’s real time processing algorithms
--Actor calibration up to 50% faster
--Improved workflows and UI layout
--Support for Vicon Active Wand for improved system calibration

Phil Elderfield, Entertainment Product Manager at Vicon said, “We’re extremely excited with the launch of Blade 2 and Axiom. We've put a lot of hard work into this release and we’re confident that the results outperform anything else available. Whether for full performance capture, for games or in a virtual production scenario, shooting mocap has become much more practical. The creative benefits and efficiency gains of seeing the performance of a live actor mapped straight onto a digital character in real-time will truly change the way motion capture is being used.”

*A full feature list is available on the Vicon website.

About ViconAcademy Award®-winning Vicon is the world’s largest supplier of precision motion tracking systems, and match moving software. It serves customers in the CG animation industry, film, visual effects, computer games, and broadcast television, as well as engineering and life science industries.

Vicon is a subsidiary of OMG (Oxford Metrics Group - LSE: OMG), plc., a group of technology companies that produces image understanding solutions for the Entertainment, Defence, Life Science and Engineering markets. Other holdings include: 2d3, a manufacturer of specialised image understanding software for defence applications; Yotta DCL our highways surveying business in the UK; and OMG Life, our new consumer subsidiary.